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Feb 4, 2020 · Over 3 billion people worldwide use social media — that’s a whole lot of yentas. The most notorious yenta of all is Donald Trump, who tweets incessantly and dishes out insults as easily as he ...
- Florina Rodov
- Overview
- The nature of constitutional law
constitutional law, the body of rules, doctrines, and practices that govern the operation of political communities. In modern times the most important political community has been the state. Modern constitutional law is the offspring of nationalism as well as of the idea that the state must protect certain fundamental rights of the individual. As t...
In the broadest sense a constitution is a body of rules governing the affairs of an organized group. A parliament, a church congregation, a social club, or a trade union may operate under the terms of a formal written document labeled a constitution. Not all of the rules of the organization are in the constitution; many other rules (e.g., bylaws and customs) also exist. By definition the rules spelled out in the constitution are considered to be basic, in the sense that, until they are modified according to an appropriate procedure, all other rules must conform to them. Thus, the presiding officer of an organization may be obliged to declare a proposal out of order if it is contrary to a provision in the constitution. Implicit in the concept of a constitution is the idea of a “higher law” that takes precedence over all other laws.
Every political community, and thus every state, has a constitution, at least insofar as it operates its important institutions according to some fundamental body of rules. By this conception of the term, the only conceivable alternative to a constitution is a condition of anarchy. Nevertheless, the form a constitution may take varies considerably. Constitutions may be written or unwritten, codified or uncodified, and complex or simple, and they may provide for vastly different patterns of governance. In a constitutional monarchy, for example, the sovereign’s powers are circumscribed by the constitution, whereas in an absolute monarchy the sovereign has unqualified powers. David Fellman A political community’s constitution articulates the principles determining the institutions to which the task of governing is entrusted, along with their respective powers. In absolute monarchies, as in the ancient kingdoms of East Asia, the Roman Empire, and France between the 16th and 18th centuries, all sovereign powers were concentrated in one person, the king or emperor, who exercised them directly or through subordinate agencies that acted according to his instructions. In ancient republics, such as Athens and Rome, the constitution provided, as do the constitutions of most modern states, for a distribution of powers among distinct institutions. But whether it concentrates or disperses these powers, a constitution always contains at least the rules that define the structure and operation of the government that runs the community.
A constitution may do more than define the authorities endowed with powers to command. It may also delimit those powers in order to secure against them certain fundamental rights of persons or groups. The idea that there should be limits on the powers that the state may exercise is deeply rooted in Western political philosophy. Well before the advent of Christianity, Greek philosophers thought that, in order to be just, positive law—the law actually enforced in a community—must reflect the principles of a superior, ideal law, which was known as natural law. Similar conceptions were propagated in Rome by Cicero (106–43 bc) and by the Stoics (see Stoicism). Later the Church Fathers and the theologians of Scholasticism held that positive law is binding only if it does not conflict with the precepts of divine law. These abstract considerations were received to a certain extent in the fundamental rules of positive legal systems. In Europe during the Middle Ages, for example, the authority of political rulers did not extend to religious matters, which were strictly reserved to the jurisdiction of the church. Their powers also were limited by the rights granted to at least some classes of subjects. Disputes over the extent of such rights were not infrequent and sometimes were settled through solemn legal “pacts” between the contenders, such as Magna Carta (1215). Even the “absolute” monarchs of Europe did not always exercise genuinely absolute power. The king of France in the 17th or 18th century, for example, was unable by himself to alter the fundamental laws of the kingdom or to disestablish the Roman Catholic Church.
Against this background of existing legal limitations on the powers of governments, a decisive turn in the history of Western constitutional law occurred when political philosophers developed a theory of natural law based on the “inalienable rights” of the individual. The English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) was an early champion of this doctrine. Others followed Locke, and in the 18th century the view they articulated became the banner of the Enlightenment. These thinkers asserted that every human being is endowed with certain rights—including the rights to worship according to one’s conscience, to express one’s opinions in public, to acquire and possess property, and to be protected against punishment on the basis of retroactive laws and unfair criminal procedures—that governments cannot “take away” because they are not created by governments in the first place. They further assumed that governments should be organized in a way that affords effective protection for individual rights. Thus, it was thought that, as a minimal prerequisite, governmental functions must be divided into legislative, executive, and judicial; executive action must comply with the rules laid down by the legislature; and remedies, administered by an independent judiciary, must be available against illegal executive action.
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Canada is a parliamentary democracy based on the British form of government. There are three levels of government in Canada: federal, provincial, and municipal. Each level sets certain types of laws and is responsible for certain types of issues. Navigating Canada’s complex federal and provincial laws and procedures can be difficult. It is important to know your rights and responsibilities ...
Totalitarian democracy. A form of electocracy in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government. Democratic Kampuchea(1975–1979) Electoral autocracy.
Laws also balance individual rights with our obligations as members of society. For example, when a law gives a person a legal right to drive, it also makes it a duty for a driver to know how to drive and to follow the rules of the road. Why we need laws. Laws are rules made by government that forbid certain actions and are enforced by the courts.
3 days ago · rule of law, the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power. Arbitrariness is typical of various forms of despotism, absolutism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism.
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The Branches of Government. Canada’s system of government has three branches: the legislative, the executive and the judicial. Each one has separate powers and responsibilities that are defined in the Constitution: the legislative branch passes laws, the executive implements them, and the judicial interprets them. INFOGRAPHICS.
